Mandela Taught a Continent to Forgive

John Dramani Mahama
is the president of Ghana and the author of the memoir “My First Coup
d’État: And Other True Stories From the Lost Decades of Africa.”

ACCRA, Ghana — FOR years, it seemed as though only one photograph of Nelson Mandela
existed. It showed him with bushy hair, plump cheeks, and a look of
serious determination. But it was a black-and-white shot, so grainy it
looked ancient — a visual documentation of an era and an individual
whose time had long passed.

In the early 1960s, fed up with the systematic oppression and inhumane
treatment of indigenous Africans, Mandela successfully proposed a plan
of violent tactics and guerrilla warfare, essentially forming the
military wing of the African National Congress.
Within a few years, this martial division, aptly named Umkhonto we
Sizwe or Spear of the Nation, was discovered and its leadership
detained. In 1964 Mandela was found guilty of sabotage, and ordered to
serve a life sentence.

During his trial, in lieu of testimony, he delivered a speech from the
dock. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in
which all persons live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities,” he said. “It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to
achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to
die.”

I was 5 years old when Nelson Mandela
became prisoner number 46664, and was banished to spend the remainder
of his years on Robben Island, five square miles of land floating just
north of Cape Town. Robben Island had been the site of a colony for
lepers, a lunatic asylum and a series of prisons. It was a place of
exile, punishment and isolation, a place where people were sent and then
forgotten....